The English began to build other forts and settlements up and down the James River, and by the fall of 1611 had managed to harvest a decent crop of corn themselves. They took a hard line with Powhatan and launched raids against Algonquian villages, killing residents and burning houses and crops. Though De La Warr soon took ill and went home, his successor Sir Thomas Gates and Gates’ second-in command, Sir Thomas Dale, took firm charge of the colony and issued a system of new laws that, among other things, strictly controlled the interactions between settlers and Algonquians.
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Growth of the Colonyġ932 First NFL playoff game is played indoors In the spring of 1610, just as the remaining colonists were set to abandon Jamestown, two ships arrived bearing at least 150 new settlers, a cache of supplies and the new English governor of the colony, Lord De La Warr. "And now famine beginning to look ghastly and pale in every face that nothing was spared to maintain life and to do those things which seem incredible, as to dig up dead corpse out of graves and to eat them, and some have licked up the blood which hath fallen from their weak fellows." George Percy, the colony’s leader in John Smith’s absence, wrote: Some Jamestown colonists even resorted to cannibalism. Firsthand accounts describe desperate people eating pets and shoe leather.
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Though skirmishes still broke out between the two groups, the Native Americans traded corn for beads, metal tools and other objects (including some weapons) from the English, who would depend on this trade for sustenance in the colony’s early years.Īfter Smith returned to England in late 1609, the inhabitants of Jamestown suffered through a long, harsh winter known as “The Starving Time,” during which more than 100 of them died. READ MORE: What Was Life Like in Jamestown?Īn understanding reached between Powhatan and John Smith led the settlers to establish much-needed trade with Powhatan’s tribe by early 1608.